The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a method for protecting information in the printing apparatus and, more particularly, to a printing apparatus having a non-volatile memory and a method for protecting information in the printing apparatus.
In a conventional printing apparatus, operation modes for defining its operations, adjustment values for use of a printing apparatus in an optimal state, and printing apparatus maintenance information are occasionally written in a non-volatile memory. These pieces of information are read out, as needed, to perform print and maintenance operations. As a non-volatile memory, an electrically programmable and erasable memory such as an EEPROM is used because it is easy to handle.
When such a non-volatile memory is powered off during a data write operation, the contents of the write data are not ensured and become indefinite data.
A conventional printing apparatus does not presume power-off during data write access to a non-volatile memory. For this reason, even if abnormal data is read out, since it cannot be determined as abnormal, an operation based on the abnormal readout data might be executed, thus undesirably resulting in an operation error.